June Reading: Fiction and Poetry

 Before I get to the books, for those of you following along with the shower saga, we've hit a snag. When Bill took a shower, the water was very slow to drain and was backing up. He successfully completed the shower and went about his day. The following day, I just washed up at the sink as I had been doing. Good thing because later when I was upstairs and picking up the bath mat, I discovered that it was soaking wet. Then I checked the scatter rug F had left upstairs. It's long so I folded it in half, placed it alongside the shower (on the side, not in front of the door), and put a plant and a box of books on top of it. Sure enough, it was wet. The wet had soaked through two layers of the rug and the box was so wet it was falling apart when lifted. Fortunately the books were fine and I was able to remove them and put the box with the recycling. F contacted plumber who arrived that evening and was puzzled about it all. He added more silicone. He discovered that there was a defective piece at the bottom of the shower door that was creating a gap in the seal. A new piece has been ordered. Not sure what's happening next, but we're steering clear for now. With that update, let's get to a more pleasant subject--books!

With everything that was going on at the beginning of the month, I was craving my favorite classic mysteries. I have many on my e-reader and it can be hard to choose sometimes, but I went with Miss Silver. When I was done with that book, I went on to the next in the series. These were the perfect reads for the moment.

The Clock Strikes Twelve by Patricia Wentworth (e-book, personal copy)

The patriarch of the Paradine family wants everyone to be at dinner one night. This includes the family members that live in the house--his sister and her adopted daughter, his sons and daughetr, as well as his employee. He also expects some extended family members who live nearby to be there. He sends an urgent message to a colleague telling him to show up as soon as possible. He too stays for dinner, where there is an announcement accusing one of the family of committing a crime. He informs everyone that he will be in his study if the person wants to come and confess. Everyone there knows his routine and all are well aware that at midnight he steps out onto the verandah, where there's a steep drop, for a breath of fresh air before bed. He never gets to bed on this night because he is found dead at the bottom of the drop. Was it an accident or did someone push him? As is usual, someone knows someone who was helped by Miss Silver and suggests that she be called in to investigate. She agrees to take the case and things go on from there. I enjoy these books. I like Miss Silver and her no-nonsense ways. 

The Key by Patricia Wentworth (e-book, personal copy)

World War II was a part of the background to the previous book and it plays a slightly more prominent role here in that the victim is a scientist, Michael Harsch, who escaped the Nazis and landed in England. His wife and daughter did not escape and did not survive, so he feels he is on a mission with regard to his scientific research into an element that he thinks can be used to make powerful weapons. He is driven because he wants revenge. His experiments are successful and he calls his contact in the British government to tell him so. They make plans to meet the following day and Dr Harsch goes to the church to play the organ, which he often does to unwind. He never leaves the church and is found slumped at the organ with a gun on the floor at his side. It looks like suicide. Someone thinks of Miss Silver and she agrees to investigate. 

Sometimes when I stitch I like to listen to podcasts or audiobooks. As I was scrolling through the 'new to library' section of the BorrowBox site, I came across the first two books in a cozy mystery series that I'd never heard of. Both were available so I decided to give them a try. Both are set in Australia and the narrator is Australian, which was interesting in terms of hearing slang and turns of phrase that were new to me. After I listened to these two I looked up more about the series and discovered that there are several more books. The author is using the alphabet to come up with her titles and I think I saw book titles through F. If I saw more of these books in a charity shop or on BorrowBox, I'd probably pick them up/borrow them, but I don't think I'll be actively seeking them out. They were good listens and I certainly enjoyed them enough to keep listening, though.

Arson at the Art Gallery by Catherine Lee (BorrowBox e-audiobook)

Addison is about to become an empty-nester as her daughter, Olivia, prepares to go away to university. Her son is already on his own. Her husband has been dead for a couple of years. She feels it's a good time for a change so on a whim, while at Getaway Bay, a place she has fond memories of from childhood, she buys a beach house, thinking she might convert it into a bed and breakfast. Her cousin, who is an artist and gallery owner, lives in Getaway Bay too. Addison's uncle (the cousin's father) is suffering from dementia and is in a care home. It's thought that he doesn't have much time left, so Addison's other cousin arrives and stays at the art gallery. Addison and her cousin are out one night when they learn that the gallery has burned down and the other cousin didn't make it out. Addison, having been married to a police detective in Sydney, starts looking into things herself, with the help of some new friends, her daughter, and her cousin--and the local police detective who is also a transplant from Sydney and knew Addison's late husband. There's an interesting mix of quirky characters and the expected village vibe. It was an enjoyable book to listen to and I liked it enough to go on to the next one.

The Body at the Beach House by Catherine Lee (BorrowBox audiobook)

In this one, work is ongoing at Addison's beach house but things are far enough along that people can stay there. When everyone gathers for the usual Friday night drinks on the patio, one person is missing. When people go to find him, they find the door locked from the inside so they break it down and discover him hanging from the wardrobe door. It certainly looks like suicide, but that theory is disproved pretty quickly. Who would want him dead and why? Once again Addison and the gang are on the case.

One evening I was sitting here knitting when I got a message from a friend. He was out walking the dog near the wee free library up the hill and took photos of what was in there. I spotted the following book, which I'd never read. I did listen to a dramatization on BBC Radio 4 years ago, but I thought I'd like to read the book. He brought it back for me and I picked it up right away. When we were in the process of moving and I went to drop off stuff at a charity shop, I stopped to look at the books they had there and came away with 4, one of which was a different novel by the same author. I have yet to read that one. Maybe soon, since both of these are books I don't plan to keep and will deposit into the wee free library at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (personal copy)

This book has been around for a couple of decades. It's narrated by Kathy, who was a student at Hailsham which at first seems like a regular boarding school. However, it quickly becomes clear that there's something special about Hailsham and something that sets the students apart. Unease starts to grow as it becomes more evident that what sets the students and Hailsham apart is something quite sinister. In case someone hasn't read the book, I won't say more than that about the plot itself. In the book, Kathy is looking back at her life and her relationships with her closest friends and others. It's a good book with heartwarming moments mixed in with the sinister undertones, anger at what is occurring, and deep sadness as we follow these children through their adolescence and young adulthood.

Murder Takes a Holiday by various authors (BorrowBox e-book)

Always with the classic mysteries 😁 I do love them. This book combines that love with another of my literary loves, short story collections. This is a fun collection of classic crime stories. The editor, Cecily Gaylord, has also put together several Christmas classic crime collections and another summer-themed one which is ready for me to read as I type. This collection is exactly what the title suggests--mysteries that involve being on holiday in some way. I admit that nothing much beats a Christmas classic crime story collection for me, but this comes very, very close. It's a fun read.

I read a few poetry collections last month. One will be in tomorrow's post which will include soon-to-be-published books. One was a collection that I'd started a while back and read a little at a time, finishing in June.

The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson by various poets (personal copy)

I love short story collections. I love the work of Lydia Davis, who sometimes writes short stories that are just a line or two. These stories have a poetic quality to them and through them I became interested in finding out more about prose poetry. This is an excellent collection with a very informative introduction. It's a book I will dip into again and again, with poems ranging across time and geography. The line between prose poetry and short stories is impossible to pin down, so if you're a fan of poetry, short prose, short stories, this is a great collection to have.

The Tree is Missing by Sharon Kuta Kelly (BorrowBox e-book)

I found this on the BorrowBox website and checked it out. It contains powerful poems about borders, crossing them, what they mean, and how they impact her and her sense of identity. Other themes include history, political and personal turmoil, and more. This is an excellent collection. 

This is long enough, so I'll be back tomorrow with some nonfiction and soon-to-be-published books. Happy reading!

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Here's a Visual

 A couple of people mentioned that they'd like to see photos to visualize the shower setup, so here they come. Just for background--this is a 150-year-old building of terraced cottages. There was no indoor plumbing when it was built and each cottage had this installed in whatever way suited the owner at the time. A couple of them had small bathrooms put in, which took away space from an already small bedroom. In this cottage, the different elements you'd normally find in a bathroom are sort of scattered around. So the shower is in one of the bedrooms.

This first one is of the room from the doorway. Note that the window is a reflection and isn't next to the shower as it appears to be in the photo.

I'm still in the process of putting things away in this room. While we were waiting for the shower to be installed, everything was piled onto the bed to be out of the way and the shower parts were in big boxes leaning against the bed.

In the photo above, you can see the pipe sticking up from the floor. This is what that looks like at floor level between the front wall of the room and the side of the shower.

These all have something to do with the antique cast iron tub that used to be in that spot. When the plumber comes to put on the stabilizing bracket (assuming that happens), he says he will remove the pipes as well. You can see why the shower couldn't go in the corner.

This is what's on the wall above these pipes--the electric shower control box. The water flows through this and is heated on the way through.

The top dial adjusts the water pressure, the bottom one is for the temperature, and the power button is above the dials. That's how we turn on the shower. There are no taps. This is a pretty standard sort of shower here and the kind we've had in almost all the places we've lived since we've been in Ireland. There's a switch to turn on the power to the box across the room by the bedroom door. That gets turned on and off for each shower.

You can see the silver hose coming out of the bottom of the box above. This is connected to the showerhead, which you can see a bit of in the photo below. Again, the window is just a reflection.

As you can see, the pipe holding the showerhead comes over the side of the shower. The shower itself was installed to be used with the tub I mentioned earlier. That tub was on feet and raised off the floor so the showerhead had to be higher, which works out well for this setup. 

So you can see that to turn the water on and off, we have to be outside the shower. This is fine. I'm used to those showerheads that you can take off and hold in your hand, so I used to get in, take it down, point it away from myself, and then turn on the water, waiting for it to warm up before turning it on myself. I also used to turn the dial so that I had a concentrated flow of water with a bit more pressure. That's not happening here. And that's fine. These are such minor quirks and I'm sure I will quickly get used to things, being very careful all the while 😊

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Not So Fast

 As I said in my last post, PVC Guy showed up on Saturday and did what he was hired to do. Plumber guy showed up with him and then disappeared. On Monday, F asked him if he planned to show up that night. He said he would and he did. He changed the kitchen taps, reinstalled the macerating toilet and tested the shower. However, we're still not quite done. The shower is usable, but needs some stabilizing. Since there's only one 90 degree corner in that room and one wall of that has various things on and in front of it, the shower couldn't go in a corner. It has been installed with a bit of space between that wall and the side of the shower. One of the things on the wall is the shower controls themselves. This makes sense, since the shower used to be over an antique cast iron tub, so controls for the electric shower had to be on the wall. What it means now is that we can't access these controls from inside the shower, so have to turn it on and test the temperature before we get in. And of course, we have to get out before we can turn it off. This is all manageable. The issue we still have though is that the sides of the shower are a bit wobbly if any pressure is applied. Plumber Guy says he will create a bracket that he can put on to stabilize the structure. The shower is a decent sized square with two glass sides and a glass door in between. The back is the PVC covered wall. So I'm not sure what he has in mind, but the goal is to keep the sides stable. In any case, who knows when this will actually occur. In the meantime, it can be used and I was planning to try it out last night rather than yesterday morning. Because I knew it was going to be sunny and warm and we were going out, I also knew I'd be too hot and feeling grubby afterwards. I figured a nice shower at the end of the day would be quite refreshing, so in the morning, I did my usual washing up routine at the kitchen sink. The day progressed. I was just about to go upstairs and take that shower when the power went off. No power, no electric shower. After about an hour, the power was back before going out again 15 minutes later. So no shower last night. Today was the day though. I got up and I had a shower. I was very careful to not touch the sides at all. I moved slowly. It was nice. Today I go up and do a bit of clean-up, since Plumber Guy did not bother to clean up after himself like PVC Guy did. Then I can start putting stuff away in that room. We've done almost nothing upstairs because of this plumbing work waiting to be done. Now that it's finished, we can proceed. It's a cool, grey day with some heavy rain expected in a while, so it's a perfect day to do that kind of thing. But right now it's time for another cup of coffee. 

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Yeah, I Will--Unless I Won't

 Plumber Guy, who apparently finds basic communication problematic, appeared on Friday evening. He seemed like he was in a rush, but he did construct the shower--tray in, drain hooked up (I think), two sides, and the door are all up. This took a couple of hours and when F came to see how things were progressing, he said he had to take his son to a disco and son would soon be calling him. He said he'd be back Saturday afternoon to re-install the macerating toilet upstairs and replace the kitchen taps. He also told F that he'd call PVC guy to see when he could come. Although F didn't share this information with him, she'd followed a lead and found someone else who would probably do the PVC if this guy was as unreliable as Plumber Guy. However, late Saturday morning, both Plumber Guy and PVC Guy appeared. They went upstairs. They came downstairs. PVC Guy told me he had to go get some stuff and would be back in half an hour. Plumber Guy stood there saying nothing.  The two guys stood outside having a chat for a fair bit of time before they both left. I foolishly thought that Plumber Guy would come back and do the other jobs he has to do while PVC Guy did the PVC wall covering in the shower. LOL.  PVC Guy did come back in less than half an hour. He got to work. It took him three hours, but he completed the job--and he cleaned up after himself, too. He wanted me to look at it, so I did. We had a brief chat about silage and grass quality (he's a farmer and as he repeated a few times, jack of all trades, master of none). He left to do another job. So that's done. It'll take a couple of days for the silicone to dry, he said, but his part of the project is complete.

And what about Plumber Guy, you may be thinking to yourself--or perhaps you're not, because of course, when he left with PVC Guy earlier in the day, that was the last we saw of him. So in spite of telling F he would do the other jobs for her Saturday afternoon, they remain undone. What else needs to be done in the shower? We don't know (and neither did PVC Guy). When will he return to do these things? We don't know (and neither did PVC Guy). Will he ever return to do anything? We don't know. Will he communicate with F to tell her more things that may or may not be true? Time will tell. So we sit here not knowing if he will just pop up out of the blue or if we'll never see him again. However, progress has been made and since the PVC was the big issue preventing other plumbers from taking the job, it might be easier to get someone else to finish it if necessary now that that's no longer an issue. 

At this point, I'm curious about why he took the job in the first place, since it seems like he's trying to avoid doing it. But I hope the kid had a good time at the disco.

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A Chilly Blast from the Past

 It's been warm here. We haven't had the extreme heat that other parts of Europe have been experiencing, but it's been warm enough that we've been under a yellow warning for high heat for most of this week. The warning expires tomorrow morning. Yesterday was the hottest day at around 30C (about 86F). This is very hot for here. As someone who doesn't care for temperatures beyond the mid-teens, this was unpleasant, but not horrible. I've experienced hotter days. I've also had much cooler days and yesterday, Bill sent me a photo reminding me of one of them.

It was about -42C (-45F) on this day in downtown Fairbanks at the start of the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race. As you can see, I had my coffee. 😃 I was quite warm and toasty in the parka my Inupiaq friend had made for me. This photo landed in my inbox at the perfect time-- it was oppressively humid and very stuffy as a thunderstorm was about to roll in. It lasted for about half an hour. We could have more storms today, but it's not supposed to be as hot and although it's a bit humid, it's fairly pleasant, with a slight breeze, plenty of cloud cover, and the birds singing away outside. Ah, we've just heard a rumble of thunder.  If you're sweltering in a heatwave, I hope the snowy scene and the thought of -42/-45 cools you off just a little bit. I hope it cools down soon and that you have ways to make your home environment less uncomfortable. 

In shower news (or perhaps non-news), no progress has occurred. Plumber Guy hasn't shown up all week, and there was no communication from him until yesterday when he said he'll be here tonight. We'll see. No idea what's going on with PVC guy. F continues to search for someone who will actually show up and do the job. It's rather ridiculous. 

Whatever the weather is like in your part of the world, have a wonderful weekend!

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We Don't Have Showers, But We Do Have Flowers

 Well, in what is a surprise to no one, Plumber Guy decided not to appear here yesterday and opted not to tell anyone that he wasn't coming. Will he ever reappear? Who knows. Will PVC Guy decide to show up and do that part of the job on any random day in future? Only time will tell. From what I've observed and the things people tell me, this isn't really unusual. People either say they'll do a job on a certain day and don't or they just don't bother communicating. This isn't a situation that I can really do anything about--I'm not the one having the work done. And I know that F is also feeling like things are out of her control, although she does try to think of ways to solve the problem and act on those ideas. She's been dealing with this for 6 weeks or more at this point and she was told at the start that the work would be done by the last weekend of May. I know that she is doing everything she can and she is extremely frustrated and stressed about it. 

We were outside this afternoon having a chat and she showed me where there are some pots and soil that I can use to plant a few veggies. I planted chard seeds the other day and they've sprouted. I'm pleased that I found the seeds because I have never seen chard in a grocery store here, except baby chard as part of a bagged salad mix. I have some cress, mizuna, and parsley seeds that I want to plant and I hope to get to a garden centre soon to pick up a few more seed packets for other greens and also radishes. Things like tomatoes don't do well here unless they're grown in a polytunnel or greenhouse. We're thinking about that for next year. I've got a couple different kinds of mint growing, which makes a lovely infusion to have either hot or cold. There is plenty of lemon balm and rosemary outside so I've been cutting some of that to use. I like each one--mint, lemon balm, rosemary--individually, but they're especially good in combination. I particularly like mint/lemon and rosemary/lemon. 

And the flowers! F is a keen, creative, knowledgeable, and highly skilled flower gardener (and retired florist) so there are flowers everywhere. Today after our chat, in which I asked her about a certain flowering plant, she whipped up this arrangement for me, which is quite lovely. 

It has my beloved hydrangeas, as you can see. I'm told I will love the little purple flowers that will open on the grey-green stems. The poppies started to bloom late last week. 

The other day she gave me a rosebud which has since opened.

And of course the fuchsias are blooming.

Some flowers have already come and gone and still more are yet to come. I'm looking forward to seeing what blooms through the summer and into the autumn.

So no showers for us humans right now, but after a record-breaking day of hot weather tomorrow (so they tell us), it looks like there will be showers for the flowers in the following days. Maybe I'll just join them outside and bring a washcloth. 😉

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A Tiny Step Forward

 The shower saga continues. The plumber did show up last night more than an hour after he said he'd be here. He did some stuff--sawing a hole in the floor and attaching a part of the drain pipe to the shower tray, which is still upstairs on its side because that's where things ended about an hour after he arrived. He was supposed to be back here tonight. It's about 7:30 and there's no sign of him.  PVC Guy didn't accompany Plumber Guy because PVC Guy is a farmer who was taking advantage of hot sunny weather to do the silage. Perhaps Saturday, he said. The forecast for Saturday is rain so we live in hope. We thought that the PVC wall covering would go up first and then the shower would be done, but now we're told that the shower will go in first. At this point either way feels a bit like wishful thinking. There is a comedic element to this entire situation. Anyway, perhaps he'll show up tonight and perhaps he won't. At this point, nothing about this situation will surprise me. Oh, I guess that's not really true. If suddenly both Plumber Guy and PVC Guy showed up and got the job done, that would be a surprise! 

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